Profile: Roza Otunbayeva, the head of Kyrgyzstan's interim government

Roza Otunbayeva, the head of Kyrgyzstan's new interim government, is not an archetypal revolutionary.

Roza Otunbayeva, the interim government leader, speaks during a news conference in BishkekPhoto: REUTERS

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

6:35PM BST 08 Apr 2010

Fifty-nine years old and married with two children, she is known for her moderate views and her ability to broker compromises. A distinguished career diplomat, she is also a consummate political operator in a country where there are few women in politics. She has done multiple stints as Kyrgyzstan's foreign minister and has served as its ambassador to both the US and the UK. She speaks English and Russian fluently and analysts say she is closer politically to Moscow than Washington. She studied philosophy at Moscow State University in the 1970s and has recently cultivated close ties to Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. Significantly, her first conversation with a foreign statesman after seizing power was with Mr Putin, the Russian prime minister. The Kremlin views Kyrgyzstan and the entire former Soviet Union as its backyard and is keen to wield influence there.

Born in the southern Kyrgyz town of Osh in 1950, Mrs Otunbayeva initially taught philosophy at a leading university after graduating.

But it seems that politics exercised a fascination for her even then. Swiftly climbing her way up the ranks of the then Soviet Communist Party, she represented the USSR at Unesco in Paris, a plum job at the time. In post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, she was equally successful. As well as her ambassadorial stints in Washington and London, she served as both foreign minister and deputy prime minister. When she returned home in 2004, she became active in politics, co-founding a political party. She played an active role in the 2005 'Tulip Revolution' that ushered in President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Originally a supporter of Mr Bakiyev, she became disillusioned, however, and accused him of resorting to the repression of the previous regime. In 2007, she became an MP for the opposition Social Democratic Party, and, after a day of deadly rioting on Wednesday, she emerged as the head of the new interim government with four male deputies.